Posts Tagged drivel

The NYT will publish all sorts of dreck, it sounds. I was not aware of the anti-female-fantasy-reader diatribe masquerading as a Review of HBO’s Game of Thrones; but, now I am pissed off. Teitelbaum’s rejoinder in huffingtonpost.com has me pounding the table in agreement. I would be looking for books to throw. Heavy ones. Like vintage Anne McCaffrey or C.J. Cherryh. Problem is, I’ll throw like a girl, right?

The characterization of fantasy as “boy fiction” is offensive to the genre and offensive to women. That we for the most part will only read what Oprah has picked, and especially if a woman wrote it, is a stereotype that is not only demeaning to women — it is also untrue.

Last night we cracked open a bottle of Clos de l’Oratoire, Grand Cru Classe, 1998. The only selection criterion was that we had two of this puppy, so it seemed like less of a gamble.

It was pretty good. I definitely don’t have the wine talents to know whether this is a great Saint Emilion red, or just an old one. Funny to think that these grapes are older than the kids.

The taste was very complex and balanced. No obvious notes of… of whatever you’d expect from an old fancy wine. We decanted it and let it sit for 15 minutes and used the good glasses… so I suppose we were tasting whatever you should taste.

It wasn’t disappointing, but as DH said, it’s not more amazing than what I’d expect from a $20 Australian red. I’m not blaming the wine, just saying this is what I got out of it. It appears it might be selling for $1022.09 per case of 12 Btls, or over $100 for a single. Yikes. Guess it’s good we have the second one still.

I can’t believe that was over a month’s gap in posting my reading results. Apologies gentle infoverse for such poor contributions to your distinctiveness – but with a backlog of a dozen or so books, some more than a month ago, it’s more like work to craft something like a meaningful review. Hence the sad treatment of even the books I liked.

I think part of what stalled me was the difficulty in commenting on an anthology or collection, specifically Women of War. Some of the stories were quite excellent, some were not worth mentioning. But, given that my purpose here is to help myself remember which authors to look for, shouldn’t I at least note the good ones? … and so I ground to a halt.

With a couple dozen books waiting to return to the library, it was time to catch up before my ‘recently returned’ list cycled out what I had not yet reviewed.

Maybe I will interview junior reader99, for his input on the Vatta books. That’s why I re-read them: because he discovered ‘Hunting Party’ when I bought it used and had it shipped to my parents’ house.